Businesses advocate equal opportunities to compete in EU market
The CEO of the Private Enterprise Federation (PEF), Nana Osei Bonsu, has said private sector operators are looking for opportunities to scale up their businesses and not to be sacrificed in a market they have no expertise to compete in.
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According to him, the high optimism surrounding the unrestricted access to the European Union (EU) market by signing and ratifying the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), should not shroud the fact that most of the local businesses have less expertise to compete in the EU market.
Speaking at the Graphic Business/ Stanbic Bank Breakfast meeting series on the theme: “The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) and its implications for businesses in Ghana”, he said although the unrestricted access to the EU market was good, it was important for the private sector to be given the necessary support to compete favourably.
“The private sector is not looking for protection. We are looking for opportunities to scale up our businesses at a low cost to be able to compete. Give us the opportunity to compete, but then assist us to get rid of our post harvest losses,” he said.
He added, “they have the experience and the technical assistance and we don’t, so if we want a partnership, it should be a win-win partnership. The local private sector should not be sacrificed for the benefit of a market we don’t know how to compete in. The private sector is not against Ghana signing the EPA.”
EU access good, but …
While Nana Bonsu admits that the unrestricted EU access was good, he reiterated that it was important for the government to turn the trade agreement into a development agreement so one party would not lose out on the benefits.
“The EU access is good, but then we have to turn a trade agreement into a development agreement. The EU is exporting mainly equipment and machinery to us, the Chinese are exporting processed food, meat fish and others. We are pushed on the left by the EU and we are pushed on the right by the Chinese. What do we trade back to the EU? You can only sell what you produce, and we produce almost nothing,” he said.
He added that “if we are going to sign the EPA, what we want to tell our government is to provide the necessary tools and infrastructure for us to compete to produce quality products and then we can go and compete in the EU market.”
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He said already, Ghana had failed to take advantage of the Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) which allowed exports into the United States (US) market.
“If we compare the EU and another opportunity that was presented, that is AGOA, into the US market, we have not been able to take advantage of that; we haven’t done much,” he said.
Job losses
According to Nana Bonsu, Ghana must not be cowed into signing the EPA because of anticipated job losses.
He said the panacea had always been that there will be job losses should Ghana fail to sign it, but then he explained that the focus should be on the jobs created by the local companies and not European companies.
“The panacea has always been that we will lose jobs if we don’t sign. We are talking about jobs of the local businesses which constitute about 98 per cent of the jobs in Ghana, not the 50,000 jobs that are created by the European businesses in Ghana. Let us not be cowed into signing the EPA because we might lose the jobs,” he said.